DALLAS — Running down the court, Caitlin Clark saw an opening.
Indiana Fever teammate Kelsey Mitchell was ahead of her, near the baseline in the paint, just in front of her defender. Sure, there were three Wings players in between Clark and Mitchell, but that’s what Clark does: she makes the risky passes. Clark bounced the ball down to Mitchell near the basket, and without missing a beat, Mitchell swung it around her back to NaLyssa Smith, who dropped it in for a basket.
It was an astounding play, and a risky one that worked out well; it will be one of the Fever’s biggest single highlights of the season.
It was also something that the Fever likely couldn’t have done at the beginning of the season. The team went through a steep learning curve when Clark was drafted to Indiana, and learning the tendencies of not only a new point guard to the team, but the league itself in a two-week training camp session is a difficult ask. Nearly impossible, even.
Clark pushed her passes, and a lot of the time at the beginning of the season, they sailed out of bounds. Her new teammates weren’t used to the pace Clark was trying to set, and they weren’t getting down the floor fast enough.
As both coach Christie Sides and Clark promised, they just needed time to jell. And that started materializing not even halfway through the season.
“The world that we live in today wants results now, they want you to be good now,” Sides said pregame. “… Just stay with the process. Stay with what we know is going to be a good product later.”
And what a product it has become.
Clark set the Fever single-game franchise record for assists with 13 on June 23, then the WNBA single-game record on July 17 with 19. Then, the team had three weeks off during the OlympicS to practice those specific things. Now, those passes find the mark.
“I think our pace is just kind of setting us apart from a lot of different teams, because we like to get, you know, the ball up and down the court at such a hot pace,” Mitchell said. “And I think the way that we play, it just makes our game thrive even more.”
Clark and Mitchell have become somewhat of a dynamic duo, too, with their connection on the court. Mitchell frequently sprints down in transition to be able to catch a potential incoming pass from Clark, and the two have developed an incomparable connection in the backcourt.
It helps that when they’re both hot, teams have to pick their poison.
“I think just playing fast, playing off one another, I think that’s probably the biggest thing,” Clark said. “And you know, when you have two guards that are both making plays, it puts the other team in a tough position of what to take away, who to put on who. So I feel like we’re definitely shooting it well, we’re playing off each other. We’re looking for each other, and we’re getting downhill.”
Mitchell and Clark have been the faces of the Fever’s post-Olympic surge, where Indiana has gone from 11-15 to 17-16 in a two-week span. It’s the first time the Fever have been over .500 at any point since 2019, and the first time they have had a winning record in August or later since 2016.
Mitchell, a seven-year veteran who has spent her entire career in Indiana, will likely see the playoffs for the first time this year — and she’s playing the best basketball of her life to get them there. She scored 36 points in Sunday’s win over Dallas, which was two off of her career-high of 38 and her franchise-record seventh straight game of 20+ points.
Clark, fresh off the WNBA’s first 30+ point, 12+ assist game, almost did it again against the Wings. She tallied 28 points and 12 assists, breaking Tamika Catchings’ record of 595 rookie points in the process.
The backcourt duo is bringing Indiana to heights it hasn’t seen in eight years. If everything goes right, they can clinch a playoff spot as early as this week. But, as always, they’re not looking too far ahead.
“It’s a focus, it’s a mentality, it’s a mindset,” Mitchell said. “And I think our group has prepared ourselves over the course of that (Olympic) break to be in these moments. And I think that moving forward, we’re gonna continue to keep the main thing the main thing, and that’s winning one game at a time. Focus on the right moments, focus on what matters.”
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